Roberto Bolaño, in full Roberto Bolaño Ávalos, (1953, Santiago, Chile-2003, Barcelona, Spain)  Bolaño’s literary career began when he published a poetry collection while living in Mexico.  In 1977 he left Mexico to travel the world and eventually settled in Spain, where he married and held a series of low-paying jobs while still working on his craft.  He turned to prose after the birth of his son in 1990, believing that fiction would be more remunerative than poetry.  Bolaño’s breakthrough work was Los detectives salvajes (1998; The Savage Detectives), which tells the story of a circle of radical Mexican poets known as the “visceral realists.”  The book begins as a diary of a young poet new to the group, but it then telescopes into a chronicle of the adventures of the visceral realists’ two founders on their search through Mexico for an elusive poet and their subsequent globe-trotting, as told from the perspectives of more than 50 narrators.  The novel made Bolaño a literary star throughout Latin America and won the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize (the Spanish-language equivalent of the Booker Prize).  He continued his frenetic writing pace, publishing at least one new book each year, spurred in large part by a looming awareness of his impending death (he was diagnosed with a chronic liver ailment in 1992).  Although he became a well-known and critically hailed author in Spanish-speaking countries following the publication of Los detectives salvajes, Bolaño was not widely translated until after his death.   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roberto-Bolano  

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”  Roberto Bolaño  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/291304-we-never-stop-reading-although-every-book-comes-to-an  

Boston beans are a classic New England dish, and a confirmed favorite of H.P Lovecraft.  He loved this dish for its heartiness as much as for its frugality, and wrote to his aunt of enjoying a meal of canned baked beans—a “unique delicacy”—with his friends Kleiner and McNeill, lamenting that a dash of “catsup” would have improved them, “but McNeill— simple soul—keeps none of these worldly, highly spiced devices in his primitive & ascetick larder.”  If you don’t have time to cook up a batch of Boston beans, try Lovecraft’s recipe for beans on toast, described in a 1925 letter to his aunt:  “Just you take a medium-sized loaf of bread, cut it into four equal parts, & add to each of these ¼ can (medium) Heinz beans & a goodly chunk of cheese.  If the result isn’t a full-sized, healthy day’s quota of good fodder for an Old Gentleman, I’ll resign from the League of Nations’ dietary committee!”  A speedy twist on the classic dish, this recipe is vegetarian but you could add 4 ounces chunky bacon pieces at the same time as the celery and garlic.  serves four  excerpted from Recipes from the World of H.P. Lovecraft by Olivia Luna Eldritch  Copyright © 2023  Find recipe at https://lithub.com/how-to-make-boston-baked-beans-lovecraft-style/ 

August 14, 2023  Against a nationwide backdrop of book bans and censorship campaigns, Iowa educators are turning to ChatGPT to help decide which titles should be removed from their school library shelves in order to legally comply with recent Republican-backed state legislation, PopSci has learned.  According to an August 11 article in the Iowa state newspaper The Gazette, spotted by PEN America, the Mason City Community School District recently removed 19 books from its collection ahead of its quickly approaching 2023-24 academic year.  Andrew Paul  https://www.popsci.com/technology/iowa-chatgpt-book-ban/

The “dog days of summer” is a phrase used to describe the hot and humid days of summer.  It can be traced back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire.  It refers to the dates from July 3 through August 11, which is 20 days prior and 20 days after the star Sirius rises and falls in conjunction with the sun.  Sirius was known as the “Dog Star,” because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog).  https://earthsky.org/earth/dog-days-of-summer/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2709  August 21,  2023